


Changeling Child

by candlebreak



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Changeling Tim Drake, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Death, Creepy Tim Drake, Dark, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Stalker Tim Drake, The Flying Graysons - Freeform, Tim Drake Gets a Hug, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26782849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candlebreak/pseuds/candlebreak
Summary: It was such a night—midnight darkness stretched too-thin into a murky dusk—when Janet crossed into Gotham, panting and bleeding. She stumbled, pitched forward onto concrete. The asphalt ripped her stockings and scraped her knee.She had not been wearing stockings before she fell.She had not been wearing a body with knees before she fell.But now she stood, a young woman, human, in a mussed skirt and torn stockings, with a graze on her knee, bleeding red blood, and a ring of perfectly matched pearls hung around her neck.*Changeling Timothy Drake AU, where Gotham borders the land of the Fae.Dark, but in a fairy-tale kind of way.
Relationships: Jack Drake & Janet Drake & Tim Drake, Jack Drake & Tim Drake, Janet Drake & Tim Drake, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 29
Kudos: 170





	1. In Which Janet Lynn Drake Appears and Brings Forth a Son

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a more straightforward changeling AU, with Tim being a little faerie baby that got swapped out for the Drakes' child to learn the secrets of the humans, but then I had an Idea and this is what happened. Mind the tags.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janet Lynn Drake enters into Gotham and creates her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unsure if I'll continue this, but if I do, it'll follow the adventures of Timothy Drake: Creepy Child(tm) as he stalks the human and not-so-human residents of Gotham.

The Evening Kingdom stretched into Gotham.

It should not have been possible; Evening could not pass into the mortal realm. But Gotham could not be called entirely mortal. She was not Fae, to be certain. She was too gritty, too filled with midnight and daylight and the harsh stink of humanity. But if she was not Fae, neither was she wholly mortal.

And so, the Evening Kingdom stretched into Gotham.

Not always, but there were nights, sometimes, when it did. Nights when the dusk lingered past its time, hours upon days of dim twilight sheltering the city in its silky caress. Nights when the shadows grew sentience and danced upon the streetlights. Nights when the Evening People crossed over the threshold into the land of mortals, then back to their own world before the dawn. None ever stayed past sunrise.

For neither Fae, nor memory of Fae, could survive outside dusk.

The city of Gotham, as she was, did not distinguish between the Fae and the Dead: they were one and the same, long-lost shadows of the Living that wandered her dusky streets and were thence forgotten.

So it was, and so it always had been.

* * *

It was such a night—midnight darkness stretched too-thin into a murky dusk—when Janet crossed into Gotham, panting and bleeding. She stumbled, pitched forward onto concrete. The asphalt ripped her stockings and scraped her knee.

She had not been wearing stockings before she fell.

She had not been wearing a body with knees before she fell.

But now she stood, a young woman, human, in a mussed skirt and torn stockings, with a graze on her knee, bleeding red blood, and a ring of perfectly matched pearls hung around her neck.

“Miss? Are you alright?”

Janet turned towards the voice, hands curling around the heels of her newly-formed stilettos.

The voice belonged to man. He was perhaps thirty, red-faced with drink and flush with the scent of leather and cash. His suit was expensive, but not correctly fitted, and one gold-and-amethyst cufflink had wormed its way halfway off his cuff to dangle carelessly from his sleeve.

Janet blinked. Then she smiled. Her teeth glinted, perfect pearls in the moonlight to match the choker circled round her throat.

The man froze. His breath hitched in his lungs—at her inhuman beauty or her unnatural grace or her predatory stance, he didn’t know. “Miss?” His voice cracked. “Can I get you anything? Do anything for you?”

Janet frowned, took stock of herself. She had been running, but now she was not. She did not need to keep running, but she should move. She could not remember why it was important that she kept moving, but she knew it as sure as she knew she was standing in a street. She nodded at the man.

“I could call a cab? Get you something to eat?” His appraising look grew more suggestive. “Something to drink?”

Janet took the offered hand. She knew that accepting food and drink and transport from strange men was not advisable. She also knew, on some instinctual level she could not name, that she was more dangerous than any man walking through these too-thin shadows.

The man blushed and stammered as she drew herself closer to him. “I’m Jack, by the way. Jack Drake.”

“Janet,” she said. She was not sure there was more to it, though the man obviously expected more. “Janet Lin,” she added—but that wasn’t quite right, was it? “Janet Lin Carterhaugh.” Yes, that was it.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Janet Lynn Carter.” The shape of her name changed in his mouth, and stood in the air between them, becoming real.

“Do you travel, Jack Drake?” she asked him.

“Do I travel-?” The question seemed to confuse him. “Well, yes, of course. For work. Drake Industries, I’m sure you know it. I’m the CEO. And for pleasure. Archaeology, that’s my passion. Probably one of the only CEO-archeologists in the world.”

Janet nodded. “That’ll do. I am one of those too.”

“What, a CEO? Or an archaeologist?”

Janet hummed in response. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Mm.”

They got in the cab. They ate and they drank, and they remembered each other. Things that never had been. Things that always had been. They had met in business school, found they had a shared passion for archaeology. Jack took Janet to the Met for their first date. Janet’s parents hadn’t approved of the match, seeing Jack as too nouveau-riche, his family fortune only established by his great-grandfather a century ago. They ate and they drank, and they remembered things that had never and had always been.

When that long evening finally broke into dawn, Jack Drake stepped out from the taxicab and onto the gravel of his driveway. He held open the door, and the woman in the cab took his proffered hand. She wore a perfectly-tailored business suit and untorn stockings. She sportedno scrapes and two finely-crafted rings on the third finger of her left hand. She bore a new name.

Janet Lynn Drake stepped out of the cab and into her manor, husband following in her wake.

No memory remained of scraped-up knees, or too-thin shadows, or tooth-like pearls glinting in the moonlight.

So it was, and so it always had been.

Dawn broke over Gotham, and Evening receded.

* * *

“We should have a kid.”

“No.”

“C’mon, Jan. It’ll be great! I can teach him how to play baseball, you can teach him that scary thing you do with your eyes—”

A pause.

“Yup, that’s the one!”

“No kids,” said Janet.

“Why the hell not? Everyone’s getting kids nowadays. The McKenzies just had twins, and the Brightons-”

“How would we travel, with a child?

“What the hell are we supposed to do, then? Just leave the company to some stranger? This is family, bloodline, inheritance. It’s important.”

Janet was silent, considering. Her parents—who had disapproved of Jack up until their deaths despite Drake Industries’ sudden financial turnaround—would have wanted her to have a child nevertheless. That was how things were Done. Bloodlines and inheritance. Family above all else. Those were old oaths, bound in iron and salt, and they called to her bones. Still, she resisted. “I’m not a mother,” she said.

And if some whisper in the back of her mind laughed— _mother? you’re not even a person_ —she swept it aside with practiced efficiency and a Xanax or three.

“You won’t have to be.” Jack, bless him, did not notice his wife’s distress. “We can get nannies to do all the actual work of it. But we need an heir. Someone to carry on the family name.”

“Mm.” Janet took a sip of wine. It circled around the Xanax in her brain. The Family Name. Even she could not deny the draw of that duty. Blood calls to Blood, Name calls to Name, and Death calls to Death. And if she did not have to raise the child herself… “Fine.”

They went to the finest doctors, of course. Nothing less for the Drakes.

“…Huh.” The doctor frowned at CAT-scan images.

“What is it?” Jack Drake grasped his wife’s hand anxiously.

Janet was not so uncouth as to let a wince mar her face. Or any kind of expression. “Am I unable to carry?” she asked. Her voice was unbothered, bored. If she was anxious—or hopeful—it didn’t show.

“No, no, that’s not it at all.” The doctor brushed off perceived concerns. “You are in perfectly good condition, Mrs. Drake. _Perfectly_ good, actually. I’ve seen anatomy textbooks with less picturesque organs than you have in here.”

“Of course,” she said, taking it as her due. She was, after all, Janet Lynn Drake, and had never been less than picture-perfect in all her existence. It was only fitting that her insides were the same.

And the same would hold true, she was sure, for any child she birthed. Janet Lynn Drake did not suffer anything less than perfection.

* * *

Timothy Jackson Drake was born in the middle of the day, under a burning sun. He was small, barely three pounds, with big blue eyes and wrinkled bald skin and a wailing scream that seemed to never end.

Jack Drake grinned, sweaty and nervous, as he showed off his infant son to the nurses in the NICU. “Look at him,” he crowed. “He’s perfect!”

Janet Drake lay in her hospital bed, and did not reach for the child. He was not hers, she knew that much. She was not a mother. And that? That was not her son.

There was something… _wrong_ with the child. She could not touch it.

 _Changeling_ , the word whispered through her mind. She brushed it aside. Changelings were things out of fairy-tales and myth. They did not belong in daylight and rationality. And Janet was a woman of rationality. She wondered if it was too soon after the epidural to pop a Xanax. She asked for morphine instead.

Timothy was taken home and placed into a crib. He screamed.

Jack took him out of the crib. Timothy screamed. Jack put him back in the crib. Timothy screamed. Janet did not touch him.

They tried nannies; they tried different formula; they tried rocking him; they tried leaving him be; they tried everything they could possibly think of. Timothy did not stop screaming.

He grew, but only barely, as the months passed. At three months old, he was barely five pounds, with big blue eyes and a head full of downy black hair and a scream that could wake the dead.

“Shut him up, shut him up, shut him up!” Jack lay in bed, pillow held tight over his head. It did not block out the screaming.

He turned to his wife. “Fucking do something! That demon-child won’t stop screaming!”

Janet looked at him, and said nothing. She did not move.

“You brought that cursed creature into this fucking world! God fucking dammit, Janet, do something about it!”

She closed her eyes.

“Fucking fine. If you won’t do something…” his mumbling devolved into something incomprehensible, but his point was made. Jack strode over to the crib, lifted the child out. “Shut up,” he told it, shaking for emphasis.

Timothy screamed.

“Shut up, shut up, shut _up_!”

Timothy’s neck snapped back on the last shake, and his wail was cut off. His face grew purple and a small gurgle escaped him.

Jack backed up, eyes going wide. “Fuck,” he swore. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

He dropped the baby, sprinted back to the bedroom. “Janet, Janet—I-” he choked on his words. “I don’t, fuck, I didn’t _mean_ —”

Janet sighed and rolled out of bed. She marched over to the crib. There was a dead baby inside it, corpse-pale and unmoving.

“Oh shit, what do I do, Jan. This isn’t a-”

Janet tuned out her husband’s panicked babbling. Blood calls to Blood, Name calls to Name, and Death calls to Death.

She reached a porcelain-white hand out and touched the child. Skin on cold skin. Flesh on dead flesh. She pulled him from the crib and held him to her breast. She hummed a song that had no tune, and walked down to the water.

It was dusk. Jack stumbled after her. “Janet, what are you doing? He’s—we need to call an ambulance! Or a doctor, or, or…a lawyer, probably. Actually, yeah, a lawyer. We can say—we can say…” He tripped on a branch and fell to the soft bed of needles on the ground.

Janet strode sure-footed through the shadows until she came to a creek that wandered its way across the Drake properties. She plunged the child into ice-cold water, and held him down beneath the stream. She piled mud and silt atop his corpse, and held him down beneath the earth.

“Janet? What the _hell_ are you doing?”

Evening stretched across Gotham, and Janet Drake pulled her son from the creekbed.

Dead blue eyes stared into dead blue eyes.

She held the child to her shoulder and pat his back. It was a strangely domestic scene, uncharacteristic of Janet. If the child had not been dead, Jack Drake would not have believed it possible of his wife.

She pat his back, and water dribbled from his mouth. Just a drop, and then a stream, and then a torrent—water and clay—streaming from his mouth, from his eyes, from his ears, from his nose, until the babe was covered in clay, until the babe was nothing but clay.

Janet held the muddy lump of clay away from her body, although it was too late to avoid stains. There was blood and muck and clay soaking through her white pyjama top; dark soil staining the knees of her matching white pants. She kneaded the clay into the earth, formed a simple body, a simple head, drew a thumb across its face in a cruel approximation of a smile. She pressed her nails into the spot where eyes would go, and laid the clay-child on the pine-covered earth.

She kissed his forehead.

Blue eyes stared into blue eyes.

In the morning, Jack and Janet awoke to soft sunlight streaming through their windows. Jack groaned, rubbed his face. He’d had a horrible dream…Timothy! He shot out of bed and ran to his son’s crib. The child was there, awake and unblemished. Blue eyes unblinking and strangely aware. He reached for his father, but Jack stumbled backwards. There was something… _wrong_ with the child. He could not touch it.

Janet followed behind her husband at a more sedate pace. “What’s wrong, dear?” She stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Her cotton pyjamas were blindingly white and impeccably clean, the sweet scent of fabric softener pressed against him.

Jack frowned.”I was worried…” _Why_ had _he been worried?_ “It must’ve been a dream, or something.”

“Mm.” Janet withdrew from her husband. “Those things always go away with the dawn. Breakfast?”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “Yeah.” He turned to go. “Does he seem… _off_ to you?”

Janet creased her brow in question.

“The kid. He’s quiet, today.”

“Timothy?” Janet laughed, and caressed the boy’s cheek. A pine needle stuck into her thumb. She frowned, then brushed it away. “He’s always been quiet, dear. Such a good, obedient child. Perfect.”

Timothy stared back up at her, silent, eyes all too knowing and aware.

Jack chuckled, rubbed his neck. Of course his son was quiet. Of course. He shook his head and followed his wife down the mahogany stairs, looking forward to his morning Bloody Mary, all memory of murdering his only son forgotten in the light of day.

Timothy Jackson Drake was born in the evening. He was small, barely five pounds, with wide blue eyes and a head full of downy black hair. And he never once cried.

So it was, and so it always had been.


	2. In Which Timothy Jackson Drake Watches the Circus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timothy goes to the circus, is granted a photograph and a hug, and watches the Flying Graysons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess I am continuing this.

Timothy Jackson Drake was, by Nature and Name, his parents’ perfect son.

This made him a strange child. Unusual. Unsettling. Upsetting.

Timothy knew this, but it did not trouble him. He was strange, yes, precocious and peculiar, but he fulfilled his function well. He did not get in trouble. He did not make noise. He did not leave messes. He was studious, smart, and attentive to his parents’ needs without being cloying or obtrusive. His parents expected him to be perfect, to be seen and not heard—or, as was the case most of the time, not even seen—and so he was. Or wasn’t, as it were.

Instead, Timothy watched.

When Timothy was three, his parents took him to the circus. Timothy watched the crowds of people, brightly colored, and the animals, and the avalanche of slushies and popcorn and cotton candy that swirled in the air. Timothy liked watching at the circus; there was so much to see. At home, there were often no people at all to see, nothing that lived and moved and breathed the air, and so he simply settled for watching the shadows move across the day.

But here, there was so much _life_ for Timothy to observe. He catalogued it all in his brain so that he could watch it over and over again later. Timothy liked watching at the circus the most that he’d ever liked anything in his whole entire life, at least the most of anything he could remember. And Timothy had a _very_ good memory, longer and more detailed than should properly be able to fit inside the wrinkles of a human brain. It was part of what made him such a perfect son; he remembered all his parents’ needs and preferences and wants and desires, and could recall them whenever was suited.

It was proper for Timothy to like the circus, because his parents had brought him there for enjoyment, and so of course Timothy would appreciate their sacrifice and enjoy. This was his Purpose. And they had done it _for him_. Timothy soaked up his parents’ time and attention through porous skin, a child-colored leech pressed up against his mother’s skirt and his father’s jacket. 

A family caught his eye. (Timothy knew it was a family, because they wore matching colors, just as the Drakes did whenever they were to make a public appearance, such as tonight, when all three—Jack, Janet, and Timothy—were in varying degrees of white and pink pastels, for the festivities. This other family wore green and yellow and red— _how garish, Timothy, those colors_ —but they were probably still a family even if their colors were garish. Timothy made a mental note to look up _garish_ in the dictionary. He had just started to read, and already there were so many words that he didn’t know. He was working his way through the dictionary to remedy this deficiency, but he had not yet reached ‘G.’ He decided not to use the word, even in his head, because he did not know what it meant. Timothy was only three years old, but he knew, from deep inside him where the cracks weren’t entirely smoothed over, that words were a form of Name, and were therefore too Permanent and too Binding to be trusted.) 

There was a mother and a father and a son in this red-yellow-green family, just like Janet and Jack and Timothy. But other than that, they were not the same. This boy was _loud_. He took up space and attention. He did a flip, and seemed to be _trying_ to get people to look at him. Timothy didn’t understand. The red-green-yellow boy was being very bad; wasn’t he worried that his parents would be disappointed and make him go away? Or go away from him themselves, which was really the same thing. If the parents disappeared, how could the yellow-green-red boy lean up against their colors and leech them into himself so that he could be a person?

But Timothy watched, and instead of going away, the parents pulled the boy close and held their arms around him and smiled. Timothy had seen other parents, on the television, press their children to their own bodies and encircle them with their arms like this. He did not understand the point of this touching ritual—willingly giving yourself over to be drained?—but he wondered what it felt like. On the television, it was generally presented as a positive thing. A reward. Sometimes, Timothy wished he were good enough to get a reward. To be good was to be quiet, and to not impose.

But the boy was not quiet. The boy was noisy. Why did he get a reward? Timothy did not understand. He watched, trying to figure it out.

And _then_ —unprecedented, unfathomable—the boy watched Timothy _back_.

Timothy shrank away from his too-bright gaze. Timothy was not supposed to be seen. Timothy was not supposed to be noticed. He felt his skin hardening around him, forming a brittle porcelain shell of protection. If he was just _still_ enough, unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing, the boy would stop seeing him.

But the red-yellow-green boy did not care about the rules of the world. He beckoned over Timothy and Jack and Janet (“Step right up! Only five bucks to get a _signed_ picture with the Flying Graysons developed right before your eyes! I see you looking, kid, come on up here and you can do a flip just like the Flying Graysons!”) and for some reason, Timothy never knew why, Jack and Janet actually did it, and were not bothered by the inconvenience. Timothy catalogued that information to consider in more depth later.

The not-quiet boy grinned, and he introduced himself: “I’m Dick. And what’s your name, lil’ buddy?” He looked at Timothy with the full weight of his gaze, and Timothy nearly splintered at the intensity of being _seen_.

Timothy’s own eyes widened. His breath caught in his throat. But now he’d been asked a question, and good children always answered questions put to them, so he swallowed to wet his throat, which was hoarse and cracked with disuse. A puff of dry, rusty dust escaped the cracks of his throat to cake the inside of his mouth. “My name is Timothy Jackson Drake,” he responded, just loud enough to not be a whisper. Impertinently, he rushed on and added, “I think your flip was really cool.” Then he froze, afraid he’d gone too far. The copper dust in his mouth almost tasted like blood.

But Dick just grinned. “You think _that_ was cool? Wait until the real show, and then you’ll see cool. I’m gonna do a quadruple flip, just for you, Timmy, and that’s super special because only three people in the whole world can do that, and they’re all right here. Just me and my mama and my papa.”

Timothy didn’t know that his eyes could get any wider, but they did. Dick flipped Timothy—Timmy?—through the air, holding him carefully but letting him go upside-down, and Timothy was _flying_. He gasped and grinned. And _then_ —unprecedented, unfathomable—the boy pressed his arms around Timothy and held him close and smiled. There was a flash, and Dick squeezed, and Timothy felt warm, like the flaking dustiness inside him had been set inside an oven, and slowly, hesitantly, Timothy squeezed back, like he’d seen people do on the television.

There was a picture, then, that was printed out of a camera, and Timothy held it very carefully. It showed him, and Dick, and Dick’s mama and papa, and Janet, and Jack, and everyone was smiling. And Dick was touching Timothy, was holding him close and wrapping his arms around him. Timothy held the picture very carefully, like a treasure, and he did not let his fingerprints smudge it or tear.

He held the picture, very carefully, for the entire show, and he did not let it rip or crumple or smudge, even though it meant he couldn’t clap, and he had to watch the picture more than the circus itself. He still watched the circus, though. Timothy was very good at watching.

He watched as one by one Dick’s mama and papa _flew_ through the sky. Spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. Four times they somersaulted through the air. And that was _just for Timothy_. He knew, with the certainty of a child, that no one else saw those flips. Dick had said, this is _just for you_.

The other people, the human bodies packed dense into the stands, saw something else. They had not been promised a quadruple somersault _just for you_. Instead, those other eyes, so many eyes—more than could fit in the skulls physically squished the tent—watched as one by one by one the Flying Graysons _flew_. And then fell. And then fell. And then—

The tent stopped breathing.

Night had come.

And with it came Death. True Death, not the half-hearted shadows of death that flickered in the evening.

Timothy watched the Flying Graysons fly, and then fall, and then be extinguished into nothing. Not even the gray wisp of smoke remained.

One little bird, flying and falling and gone.

Two little birds, flying and falling and gone.

Three little birds, flying and falling and—

A shape came out of the Night. It was part of the Night, and yet…separate. Timothy did not know its Name.

Timothy frowned. He knew that things without a Name were dangerous, because they were not Bound. But the night-shape didn’t _feel_ dangerous. The night-shape felt safe.

It circled around the last little bird and seethed down to the ground.

No one else saw that the night-shape was safe. This was because they didn’t _watch_. Not like Timothy. Timothy watched, and he saw that the night-shape was safe.

Everyone else looked, with their eyes inside of their skulls, and they saw blood and brains splattered on the dirt ring. They saw seething darkness and Death and Night. They screamed and scattered. Even Jack and Janet ran, fast and far away from the fallen birds, lest they share the same fate.

Timothy did not run. Timothy could not run while holding the photo safe, and the night-shape was where safe was. So instead, he pressed himself into the barrier between the seats and the ring, and he stood very still. Timothy did what he did best: he watched.

He saw the night-shape pool and rise into the form of a man.

Timothy watched, and he thought.

Timothy knew shadows. He knew unnatural and the space between night and day where the impossibly-thin tendrils of evening creeped in and around. Sometimes, when Timothy had been put away for the day, or the night, or the month, and he had no function to serve, he would explore in the Evening’s shadows, and he watched how they sometimes grew impossibly thin and unnaturally long and called to him with too-sweet promises.

The night-shape was not a shadow. It was of Night, not Evening, and was a thick, inky black, except for one part: the bottom half of a face, teeth and jaw and lips and tongue exposed to the world.

Timothy watched that tongue and teeth and lips move, murmur words too soft to hear, press softly into black hair, black hair and brown skin and red-yellow-green cloth all subsumed into Black. He watched the night-shape wrap itself around Dick Grayson and hold tight.

Timothy stood stock still, body melted into the barrier, and watched the night-shape swallow up color, and he did not cry. He did not make any noise. He did not move.

He ached inside, for that night-shape to press around him too and drain away his colors so that he did not have to feel. But that comfort was not for children like him, children who were perfect and self-sufficient and neither had need for nor deserved such rewards.

Instead, Timothy watched. He stood there for hours, pressed inside the barrier, as the police came and processed the scene and the night-shape curled around Dick and shepherded him away.

They passed right by Tim on their way out.

“Would you like to come home with me?” The night-shape asked. His voice was deep and tired.

“Why would you do that, Batman?” Dick’s colors were still bright against the darkness. The night-shape had not drained them away. Simply circled them around.

Batman _. Batman_ was the name of the night-shape. Timothy did not breathe as _Batman_ passed by. But he watched, and he _saw._

He saw Batman had two legs and two arms and two hands and two feet, all the normal amount of appendages, although they were all obscured by opaque black cloth. He saw that, yes, Bound by his Name, Batman was a _man_. And a bat? He did not look like a bat, but maybe Timothy was not watching well enough. Timothy frowned, and he watched, and he considered.

He thought about Photographs and Promises and Colors and Names, about Images and Eternity and Stillness and Death. He did not come to any conclusions. If he was to be properly prepared for his role as the perfect child, he would need more information.

First, though, he went to find his parents. Timothy was perfectly fine, but it wouldn’t do for him to cause them any worry.

Unfortunately, it was too late for that. Jack and Janet fussed, and made a show, and reprimanded. Timothy apologized and made his voice go shaky and scared, but not too scared. Just enough so that when Jack and Janet made the motions of comforting him, they could see how he melted into them, how his voice lost its scared and became grateful and appreciative of their sacrificed emotion.

It was not that Timothy did not appreciate their sacrifice. It warmed him inside, being able to feed off this emotion, willingly given. But he did not need it. He had not been made to need his parents’ sacrifices. He was not scared, and did not need comfort. But a perfect son appreciated his parents and made them feel useful. Made them feel needed. And that was Timothy’s purpose: to be the Drakes’ perfect son.

So he was scared and grateful and appreciative, because he was the perfect son and that was what the perfect son did. And he did not do or think or feel or remember anything else, because he was the perfect son and that was all he was.

The perfect son did not feel more comfortable with Death and Batman than with his own Mother and Father. The perfect son did not remember his father’s fingers digging bruises into his arms as the man snapped his neck. The perfect son did not remember his mother’s hands holding him down, down, down, under icy cold water and dirt, and forcing him into a clay body that was not his own, that was molded in only a cruel approximation of a person. The perfect son did not remember awakening under pine needles and Evening’s shadows, and knowing he had been Named, and thereby Bound, to one purpose and one purpose only, that he could never be anything outside that purpose.

Timothy Jackson Drake was, by Nature and Name, his parents’ perfect son. He never spoke of that Evening under the pine trees, nor that Night under the circus tent. He never bothered his parents with uncomfortable memories of Death.

But Timothy Jackson Drake also kept the picture of two families with clashing colors safe in a box under his floorboards, and he looked at it often, and he tried to understand. Timothy Jackson Drake, who was perhaps deficient and unsuited to his purpose, took out the picture and thought about Dick Grayson, still bright in yellow-red-green, and Batman, cloaked in Night, and the safe press of a warm body wrapped around him.


	3. In Which Timothy Attends School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timothy goes to school, and sees a play

When Timothy was five years old, he was enrolled in Kindergarten. His parents did not enroll him; this Timothy knew because he watched them when they were home and they did not make any trips to any schools or even discuss the possibility of enrollment. One day, he was simply enrolled in St. Clotilde’s Preparatory Academy for Children.

This is how it was, because five-year-olds went to Kindergarten, and Timothy was five years old, and Timothy was the perfect son, and the perfect five-year-old son would of course go to Kindergarten. This is how it was, because Timothy was a Drake, and Drakes would of course go to the fanciest and most expensive school there was, and St. Clotilde’s was the best in Gotham.

So, Timothy was enrolled in St. Clotilde’s, and all was right.

His parents were not in Gotham for his first day of school. But Timothy got himself up at precisely 6:30am and made himself breakfast (orange juice, coffee—black, and a toasted croissant, because that was the appropriate breakfast for a young businessman). Then he carefully pressed and ironed his school uniform that he’d hung out the night before.

(The uniform had appeared at the same point he’d been enrolled, and Timothy used the iron in the downstairs linen cabinet because he could not reach the iron in the upstairs linen cabinet without climbing the shelves, and climbing the shelves might get messy, and then he’d have to clean it up. He did not use the ironing board for the same reason, and instead lay a sheet out on the carpet in its place. He had been using this method to iron his clothes since he was three, and he had only burned himself once. Timothy was a very self-sufficient child, and he only needed to learn a lesson once to learn it entirely. He did, however, sometimes spill the hot water from the iron onto his arm. He had not quite figured out how to carry it without spilling at least a little water, and if he wanted to put the iron back before Mrs. Mac got there, he couldn’t wait for the water to cool down. The hot water hurt when it splashed on his arm, but it just softened the skin and was easily smoothed out, so Timothy figured that was okay and didn’t count as a real burn.)

Mrs. Mac—who had worked for his parents even before Timothy was born—drove him to school and walked him into the classroom. She held his hand in the parking lot. That was nice, because it meant he could leech her colors, just a little, but she didn’t have the same _Family_ sense to her colors that Janet and Jack and the Dead Mr. and Mrs. Graysons had had. But that was okay. Timothy was a very self-sufficient child.

The school was _loud_. There were so many kids, and they all had names, and there were teachers who had names too, Ms. Cheska and Mr. Bastien, and their colors were bright bright bright. Timothy was not sure exactly how to be the Perfect Son in the school, so he stayed quiet and watched and didn’t call any attention to himself. That was how to be the Perfect Son at home, after all.

Several months into Kindergarten, Timothy was confident that he had made the right choice and that being quiet and dutiful and not drawing attention was also the Right Way to be at school. He never got in trouble, and he had good grades on all his papers and drawings and most of the time there would also be smiley-face stickers. Timothy liked the smiley-face stickers. They were very colorful. (Sometimes, at home, he would look at the smiley-face stickers on the pages and touch them with his finger and smile back at them. It was almost like leeching colors, even though he could not leech colors from Dead Things.)

Then, one day, Ms. Cheska pulled him aside before recess. “Hi Timothy,” Ms. Cheska said, kneeling down in front of him to give him her full attention. “Do you think we could talk for a little bit?” She smiled, and her smile was warm.

Timothy’s insides screeched. This was Not Good. Adults weren’t supposed to notice him, but he was also supposed to respond when spoken to and not make trouble and not cause any concern, so his outsides did not show that his insides were screeching, and instead Timothy smiled (good thing he’d had all that practice from the stickers) and said, “Of course, ma’am.”

Ms. Cheska laughed, but it was a little bit sad. “You’re always so polite, Timothy. You don’t have to call me ma’am, you know. You can call me Ms. Cheska.”

Timothy bit his lip and nodded, wide-eyed. He had never been given explicit permission to use someone’s Name before. But she had said to do it, so it would be impolite not to. “Yes, Ms. Cheska,” he said.

“I just wanted to check in with you, Tim. Make sure everything’s okay. I know things can be loud and scary when you’re just starting out, and sometimes Mr. Bastien and I get distracted with so many kids, but I want to let you know that we’re here looking out for you, and you can ask us questions any time or let us know if anything is wrong.”

There weren’t any questions in there, but she seemed to be waiting for a response, so Timothy (Tim?) said, “Yes, Ms. Cheska.”

“Are you doing okay Tim? I notice you don’t play very much with the other kids. Are you having problems with them?”

 _Badbadbadbadbadbadbad_.He wasn’t supposed to be _noticed_. He definitely wasn’t supposed to be a _problem._ Those were things for Bad Kids. And Timothy was not a Bad Kid. Bright white fear sliced through Timothy’s brain. Not good. Not good. Very very not good.He went very still. Very very very still and quiet until you couldn’t even notice him, like he was supposed to when he wasn’t in use.

Ms. Cheska frowned, just a little bit, with the space in-between her eyebrows. She was still looking at him, but her eyes slid past him, just a little bit, went unfocused and glazed when she tried to hone in. She didn’t know how to _watch_ like Timothy did. She still saw him, of course—Timothy couldn’t turn _invisible_ —but Timothy was too quiet and still for her to grab him in her gaze.

“Well,” she said, dazed, and patted his head, “I’ve kept you from recess long enough. Run along now, go have fun.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Timothy. He walked out of the classroom quickly—but not _too_ quickly—and sat against the school wall with his dictionary, like he always did at recess. He was making good progress, halfway through ’U.’ Soon, he would have made it through all the words, and then he would know everything there was to know and he wouldn’t mess up or be a Bad Kid ever again because he would know exactly what to do and when and where and how.

Timothy replayed the badbadbad conversation with Ms. Cheska in his head as he read. She had used plenty of words that were after _U_ in the alphabet— _very, want, we, with, wrong, you_ —but Timothy already _knew_ all of those words. He had understood all of the words Ms. Cheska said, but he still didn’t know how to be a Good Kid in that situation.

Timothy chewed his lip and thought about it. It was probably because he’d been Bad and Noticed and Problem to begin with: if he hadn’t caused so much trouble in the first place, she wouldn’t have pulled him aside to begin with. Nodding to himself, he figured that made sense: from now on, he would just have to be much stiller and much quieter and make sure that no one noticed him ever except if he needed to be noticed, like for getting good grades and being a good reflection on his parents and being a Good Son.

He went back to reading the dictionary.

* * *

In second grade, Timothy’s class went on a field trip to see a play. It was not a very good play. There were real-people actors and puppets and a set made out of plywood that had been painted with many bright colors a long time ago but now was just kind of faded, like it had been leeched dry by too many generations of greedy children. It was all about being yourself and having confidence to share your differences. There was a bad-guy bully who was supposed to be a kid, but was played by a very very large adult man with a scary frowny face. There was very bad singing. They made the children in the audience clap and sing along. At the end, the bad-guy bully learned the error of his ways and cried and said that he was just jealous of all the other kids and apologized and sang another song and then everybody held hands and sang, even the kids in the audience.

The play was Stupid and Bad and Wrong, but Timothy watched it anyway and did the clapping and the hand-holding and the singing, because he had grown up since he was five years old and in Kindergarten, and now he knew that sometimes the best way not to be noticed was to do exactly the things that everyone else did and blend into their rhythm until no one could pick out your individual moves.

After the play, the kids got to talk with the actors. The actor who played the bad-guy bully tried to say hi to Marcia Lottington, who was only six and scared of everything and made a Big Deal about everything, and she burst out crying and screaming in fear. Timothy used the opportunity to move into a shadow near the wall so that he did not have to interact with anybody.

Mrs. Beare was moving towards crying Marcia Lottington, but before she got there, the bad-guy bully actor knelt down and made himself small and changed his face so that it less scary and smiled at Marcia and Marcia stopped crying.

Timothy blinked.

The bad-guy bully actor had _made himself small and changed his face._ No one else saw, because it was only a little change and they were not watching, but Timothy saw because he was always watching. The bad-guy bully actor _had less body_ than he had had thirty seconds ago. His face was softer, rounder, his eyes kinder, his eyebrows…less tilted, maybe? There was a change, and it was not the kind of change that you could do just by moving muscles in your face.

Timothy frowned and thought. He wished that he could change his face and make himself small. Well, smaller. Timothy was already small for his age. But that would super help him be a Good Kid and a perfect son if he could change his shape and his face to be whatever his parents wanted. Timothy needed to learn how to do that.

But he couldn’t ask—Timothy looked at the wall where there were pictures of all the actors and their names— _Mr. Karlo_ how he did that in front of everybody. That would attract attention. He would have to wait until Mr. Karlo was alone. That was a problem, because Mrs. Beare and some teachers were chaperoning them, and it would cause trouble if Timothy disappeared. But, if he went back to the school and waited for Mrs. Mac to pick him up and drive him back to Drake Manor and then wait for Mrs. Mac to leave and then take the bus back into Gotham, Mr. Karlo would probably be gone from the theatre already. Timothy thought about the problem.

He texted Mrs. Mac—he was only seven, but of course he had a phone; he was a _Drake_ —that a friend’s mom was driving him home. Then he walked over to the parent sign-out sheet, waited until no one was looking, and signed himself out using Mrs. Mac’s name. Now there would be no trouble.

He waited in a corner until Mr. Karlo left, then followed him into a back hallway and then into a dressing room.

Mr. Karlo shut the door and sighed. “Another stunning performance, Basil,” he said into the mirror, where Timothy was reflected but unseen.

Timothy tried to screw up his courage to ask Mr. Karlo how he made himself small and changed his face, but the words stuck in his throat. He could not speak unless spoken to. Good boys did not draw attention to themselves. Good boys did not sneak into actors’ dressing rooms. Timothy shouldn’t be here. Timothy was being a Bad Kid. That was Wrong. Timothy was Wrong. Timothy was Bad and Wrong and Broken, and he needed to _go_ , he needed to go _now,_ but the door was closed, and Timothy didn’t think that even he could open it without Mr. Karlo noticing. Being moving and unnoticed only worked when there was moving around you. When there was still, Timothy has to be still.

And right now, Mr. Karlo was the only thing moving. He shrugged out of the bad-guy bully letterman jacket he was wearing, and… _rippled_. There was no other word for it. His skin pinched and morphed and expanded outwards, and suddenly he was no longer a bad-guy bully actor, but instead a lump of clay. Malleable. Shapable. Earthen.

Suddenly Timothy was back, back, under the water, under the earth, in the earth and under the pines, clay and water and blood, his mother’s thumb digging a deformed smile into his face, blood and clay and water and the sharp scent of pines. He gasped, desperate for air, for lungs, for having _air_ instead of water and earth mixed into mud.

“Who goes there?” boomed Mr. Karlo, spinning around and into a human body again. “Who dares disturb the great Basil Karlo, act-or extraordinnaire?”

Timothy gaped up at him, but the question had been asked and it was almost a relief to answer it, the words coming out of him in a mushy flood. “TimothyJacksonDrake,Mr.Karlo,sir. Canyouteachmehowmehowtodothat? PrettypleaseIthinkit’sreallycool.”

Mr. Karlo took a step back, stunned.

Timothy squirmed on the inside. He had made a Fuss. That was Not Good. And he had not properly enunciated. That was dangerous, even if the words spoken had been relatively innocuous. Timothy should have known better.

“Child?” asked Mr. Karlo, tentative. “You are not frightened by my disfigured flesh?”

Timothy shook his head. “No, sir. I saw you in the lobby talking with Marcia Lottington who’s only six and scared of everything and you made yourself smaller and less scary and she stopped crying and it was so cool and I need to learn how to do that too so that I can be the perfect son and be Just Right for my parents, so could you teach me how pretty please.”

Ugh. That was Too Many words, but Timothy did not have much practice using words for anything other than answering simple questions, and he thought he got the point across.

“Wait, let’s take this again from the top,” said Mr. Karlo. “Shouldn’t you be with your school group? Or your parents?”

Timothy shook his head. “No, sir. I was signed out, and then I came to see you.” Timothy left out the fact that he had signed _himself_ out. It was still the truth, so it was not a Bad Kid thing to do.

“And your parents will not be concerned with your whereabouts?”

“No, sir.” That was just the actual truth.

“And you wish to be able to…shapeshift…in order to be a better son?”

“Yes, sir. The perfect son. It’s my purpose.” Timothy was happy. He knew the answers to the questions now.

Mr. Karlo looked at him for a long moment. Timothy stilled, uncomfortable. But Mr. Karlo still managed to see him. Maybe it was because he was clay too.

“I am sure your parents love you and are very proud of you regardless of your outward appearance. It is unnecessary for you to learn the skills of the shapeshifter.”

Timothy frowned. That wasn’t true, but he wasn’t supposed to disagree with grown-ups. But…Mr. Karlo was an actor who played a kid, and he wasn’t Timothy’s parents, and even if he was a grown-up, weren’t actors low-class? So Timothy did not need to follow the same rules of Propriety. Probably. Good enough. Timothy had already broken so many Rules today. What was one more?

“No, sir, they don’t. Love me, that is. They made me to be useful and perfect, so I have to be useful and perfect. Shapeshifting would help me be useful and perfect, so therefore I have to learn it. Will you teach me pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?”

Mr. Karlo still didn’t seem convinced, so Timothy added, “I can pay you with money to teach me.” He did have access to a Drake expense account he could use for any expenses incurred in the pursuit of bettering himself.

“It is not safe, young child, for you to be doing this. Nor is it healthy.”

Timothy shrugged. “That’s okay, Mr. Karlo, sir.”

“What did you say your name was, again?”

“Timothy,” said Timothy.

“And your last name?”

Timothy opened his mouth to answer, but there was something in Mr. Karlo’s tone…was he going to try and contact Timothy’s parents? That wouldn’t be good. It wasn’t proper for a Drake to be backstage in a theatre, Timothy knew that much. If Mr. Karlo didn’t remember his name from when Timothy had introduced himself earlier, maybe he shouldn’t give it again. “Are you going to get me in trouble, sir?”

“You? No. I am sure that you are just…following your purpose, as you say. However, your parents…” He trailed off.

Timothy frowned. _Mr. Karlo would try to get his parents in trouble?_ That didn’t make any sense; they were his Parents. Parents didn’t get in trouble.

But Mr. Karlo seemed to think they could. And if he tried, surely they would find out that Timothy had been here, and then they would Worry and be Disappointed that he was besmirching the Family Name, and so Timothy should not give Mr. Karlo his name, not _again_. He shouldn’t have even done it the first time; Names were Important, after all. Stupid, _stupid_ Timothy.

“Thankyou,Mr.Karlo,Ishouldprobablybegoingnow,” said Timothy, and he bolted out the door.

“Wait!”

But Timothy wasn’t waiting, not even when a giant clay hand tried to scoop him up and he had to slide and duck under it, scraping himself up in the process. He could teach himself how to shapeshift later, by himself, or learn it from the library. The library knew everything. Timothy didn’t need Mr. Karlo. He was a very self-sufficient child.

So he ran and ran and ran until he was sure Mr. Karlo couldn’t find him. When he was sure Mr. Karlo wasn’t following him any more, he took inventory of himself and his location. Drake Manor was in Bristol, and Timothy was in Gotham Proper. Bristol was north of Gotham proper. So Timothy oriented himself to the north using the sun (a skill he had learned from a book about camping), and started walking.

It took him almost seven hours of walking return himself to Drake Manor. His legs were very short and his stride was not very long, he had to be Still in the shadows for long lengths of time so that no one would notice him, and he had to keep doubling back and back again as the streets curved and wound through the same corners twice and twice again, dead ends inside dead ends, a mousetrap maze that shouldn’t be possible according to the rules of geometry. But Timothy kept going, even when the sun went down and he had to use the light of the top of Wayne Tower to orient himself (Gotham was too smog-filled for the north star to shine through).

Eventually, he made it home. He was tired and sore, and the clock on the microwave read 11:37pm. Timothy put his school uniform in the laundry hamper, took a shower, and cleaned up the mess he had made on his entry to the manor. He did not make any food, because he did not _need_ food, even if it was nice, and that would make even more of a mess plus he wasn’t very good at it yet.

Satisfied that his horrible lapse in judgment would not come back to haunt him, Timothy went to bed. He had been lucky, but he had learned his lesson. He was never ever ever going to ask anyone for help ever _ever_ again.


End file.
